Social Media Series – #1 Pinterest

This past week, I attended five day summit on Blogging. It was an amazing opportunity to garner knowledge from the experience of bloggers that make a living off their blogs. I was excited to see how it would help me in developing better content and even a financial benefit from my own personal blog. What I didn’t expect was to take away some great information that we could use in our Women’s Ministries!

As WM Leaders, there are a LOT of questions that we get asked.

When is our next event?

Could you recommend a devotion or bible study?

Do you know of any GOOD Women’s Conferences?

Those are just a few of the questions that we get asked very often, but there are a slew of more personal ones too.

Wouldn’t it be nice to put all of those answers in one single place, where women can find the answers without having to pin you down after Sunday service? (Kidding!)

For most church websites, we have a limited amount of information we can include. Many Women’s Ministries are turning to social media to serve as a point of information. Utilizing social media platforms in this way gives the Women’s Ministry team a great way to communicate with their members, store information for future use, and can even be used for fun.

When you set up a Pinterest account, you organize your page with pin boards. These are like little miniature filing cabinets that you can title based on content. You can set up a board for “Church Announcements” where you link back to the church website. A pin board for “Community News” would be a perfect landing place for news in your community that would interest your members. Or, create a pin board for “Christian Businesses” in your area that you can link to their websites.

You can also use the pin boards for fun things like “Crafts”, “Recipes”, “Heath & Fitness”. For spiritual growth, create pin boards for “Bible Studies” or “Devotions”. You could even link to your WM Facebook Group’s Events invitations, creating a WM Calendar of Events. Have you ever had someone ask you about the worship songs from Sunday or recent WM Event? Create a pin board. Want to keep tabs on different organizations or ministries that your WM supports or volunteers with? Create a pin board for that too! It’s a limitless platform, where you can create as many pin boards as you want!

Pinterest Boards are also a fantastic resource for the MW leaders. We can create pin boards to store information on event planning, future studies we’d like to offer, decorating ideas, menus, themed events, products, leadership training, articles, retreat locations, and so much more.

What I love about Pinterest is that you don’t have to choose. If you decided to set up a Pinterest account for the women in the church to participate in, you can also use it for your WM leader team by creating “secret” boards. First, select the “Create a board” square at the top left of your pin boards.

A box will pop up for you to put in the details for the pin board, which contains a slider option for “secret”. Slide to yes. Now you have secret board that only you & those you assign as collaborators (under the slider) can see. There is a limit to the number of secret boards you can create, so you will need to use broader terms for categorizing your team ideas. However, it allows your pin board to serve a dual purpose.

If you decide to create a Pinterest Account for your Women’s Ministry, please share it on our Facebook Group! We can follow each other’s accounts and share ideas and inspiration!

Here is great outline on Pinterest for personal use, which I think is helpful. Keep in mind, since it is a group to represent your church… use the church logo not your own personal photo for it. Be sure to include the church website and other WM social media accounts you have registered. You can update as needed. If you need to, set up a gmail email account for your WM that you can use to register for social media platforms (even if you are not using it for members to communicate through). I recommend this, because as WM leaders may change over the years, you can hand off that account information to future leaders (or other team members) without compromising your own personal accounts.

Invite the women from your church to your Pinterest Account, follow others WM Groups or Churches, and Retailers and Organizations that interest you as WM leaders. If you find an individual person who is posting great WM information, you can follow just that particular pin board without following their entire account.